1 week to go for GMAT ( Scoring 660, Targeting 700+)

[vvsmart]

Hi,

I have my GMAT in a week's time and I was scoring in the range of 640-660 ( Q 48 - 49 & V - 31 - 33 ) on GMATPrep. In the last 2 tests I scored 49 on Q. I have never scored below 46 on Quant on any of the GMATPrep or Powerpreps or MGMAT CATs.. Today, shockingly, I scored a 39 on quant and 32 on verbal, making the total score of 590. I was devastated. Here are my observations from today's tests:

Quant - Got around 4 very easy questions wrong because of silly mistakes. Was pacing quite well, with around 6 questions to do in the last 12 minutes or so. Then got stuck on a challenging question .. say about 5 minutes.. Was left with 3 questions to do in the last 2 minutes.. Panicked and got all 3 wrong. Overall I saw in quant that I got a string of questions wrong 4 times.. Q ( 3,4,5) , Q(15,16,17), Q(31,32), Q(35,36,37)...
I was devastated today looking at my Quant score. I wasn't putting too much effort on Quant but had definitely grasped all the tips from Manhattan review books and tend to apply them successfully.
Can you help me explain why such a low score today on Quant? This leaves me jittery.

Verbal - Every time I try to stick to a pre-defined timeline..I am more or less successful, but always I am left with 3-4 questions wrong in the end. Today it happened the same way. Got overall 13 wrong( which I know is meaningless, after having read so many forums on Manhattan). The strings I got wrong were Q(13,14), Q (29,30), Q(38,39,40,41).. Scored a 32 on verbal.

Verbal I do not have high hopes and hope to score around 34 but haven't reached that level as yet. But I still hope that not getting the string of questions wrong in the end would help me get there( score of 34). This is all i hope to achieve in the week to go.
I definitely follow the tips of 90 Seconds(SC), 2m-2.5m(CR), 3m(Reading Short RC), 4m(reading long RC), 90 seconds (General questions RC), 2m(Inference RC).. But obviously, not so religiously and that is why the timing towards the end is bad.

Any further tips on what must I do to get those last questions right? Should I sacrifice(guess) say questions between 20-30 ( ensuring not getting a string of them wrong ) so as to answer those last questions correctly and not getting a string of them wrong..

From today's test I am kind of beginning to assume that GMAT has a huge penalty for getting a string of questions and specially,specially the last few.. Correct me if I am wrong..

[StaceyKoprince]

The test does have a penalty for getting a string of questions wrong in a row, yes. That penalty is effectively worse at the end of the test simply because there are no questions left after that - you can't try to answer something else right in order to recover a little bit.

First, let's just address your overall goal. It is typically the case that the scoring range you're in a week before the test is about what you should expect to hit on the real test. If you're scoring 660 now, and you really want a 700+, then you should consider postponing your test until your practice tests are in the same range that you hope to score on the real test. Alternatively, if you really need to take the test in a week, then you might have to consider lowering your goal score. (This isn't to say that you couldn't hit 700 - it's just not something you should expect. People don't typically improve 40+ points in one week.)

Second, you've highlighted some reasons why your quant and verbal scores might have dropped. Four "very easy questions" wrong would definitely bring your score down, as would answering the last 3 or 4 questions in a row incorrectly.

Your quant score really dropped on that last practice test. It's a good idea to try to figure out every possible reason, so that you can figure out what to do about those things and, hopefully, prevent this from happening on the real test. This article can help you to do that analysis:

http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/26/my-score-dropped-figuring-out-what-went-wrong

(Note: your score didn't really drop on verbal, so you probably only need to do this analysis on the quant section.)

As far as the timing / running out of time problem, yes, that's something you really want to fix before you get into the real test. Everybody has to guess at some point; you can't avoid that. You can only choose WHEN to guess. If you don't make an active choice, then you will be forced to guess at the end of the section.

So, yes, you do want to guess at points as you go through the test. You don't want to give yourself any artificial constraints, though, about when to make those guesses. (eg, don't tell yourself you can only guess between 20 and 30.)

Generally, keep an eye on the time. If you hit something that looks super hard to you, do one of two things. If you aren't behind on time overall, then try the problem, but don't spend one second more than the time you're supposed to spend on a problem of that type; do not LOSE time on that problem. If you are already behind on the overall time, then make a random guess and move on immediately.

In general, do not spend extra time on the hardest problems you see. Extra time is for problems that are hard, but not the hardest you see - extra time is for the ones that are only a little bit harder than what you can typically do. The hardest ones are the ones on which you do not want to spend any extra time and you might even want to save some time.

Again, I will suggest that you think about postponing your test, if possible. Learning how to manage your time effectively in the way I describe above typically takes longer than a week to perfect.

[vvsmart]

Hi Stacey,

Thanks for your reply.

I am also thinking on the lines of postponing my exam but then I am also thinking that why not i take it as a practice test and go checkout how does the real thing look like. In a sort of a dilemma.

I have read it several times that retaking an exam is not considered that bad. I am certainly short of my expected score so I can only depend on a stroke of fate to get me to my desired score level. So what do you suggest, should I take up the upcoming test as a practice and then try and improvise from there on to achieve an even higher score?

My second question is, though I have read this several times too, how can i improve my verbal score from 32-33 to around 37-38..

When i do analysis of my tests, i realize that I am not quite good on RC's, inference ( for the simple reason that my comprehension is slow, in spite of writing down the ideas in RC).. Similarly, even in CR, though I understand most of the rules and can answer CR in around 3 minutes, it is during exam that I am not so good when it comes to accuracy, again timing. I have improved quite a bit on SC, after reading from Manhattan SC(Simply recommend that book to everyone taking the GMAT)..
Certainly there is scope for improvement in SC as well..

Overall I feel i just need to improvise on the speed with which I comprehend passages or CR.. For SC too some improvement on questions involving meaning..

Quant I do score around 49, so not too much worried about it..

One last thing, considering I need to go from 32 to 38 on Verbal, I know its no point in asking how long will that take, but what I want to know is IF i were to not take the exam this weekend, should I cancel it and then take a date accordingly as and when I improve or say just reschedule it by around 1.5 months.
I hope the "It" in the last sentence has a proper antecedent :)

[StaceyKoprince]

Good questions.

Most schools don't care if you take the exam up to three times, so if you haven't taken it before, then there's no real downside from the schools' point of view.

How would you feel about taking the test and not getting a score that you like? Would that be okay, knowing that you're not fully prepared for it right now, or could that possibly demoralize you and make you lose confidence?

If you think you could lose confidence, don't take it. If you think it would energize you to work harder, then go ahead.

If you do reschedule, I believe you have to pick your reschedule date right now - you would pay around $50 to do that. (And I believe you can only reschedule once; if you miss again, you lose the original $250 plus the extra $50.) Alternatively, if you want to wait to pick the new date, I think you'd have to cancel entirely, then pay the whole $250 again sometime in future to reschedule. (I'm not entirely sure of Pearson's policies though - you should talk to them to find out for sure.)

In terms of how to get better, here are some articles that can help with the things you describe.

First, here's an article that talks about how to analyze an MGMAT practice test to determine your strengths and weaknesses:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23/evaluating-your-practice-tests

This article is about how to analyze any kind of practice problem:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/09/how-to-analyze-a-practice-problem

Here are some articles on RC:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/23/how-to-read-a-reading-comp-passage
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/25/how-to-analyze-a-reading-comp-inference-question

And CR:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/01/23/how-to-analyze-a-gmatprep-cr-question

The full archive of around 40 articles is here, in case you want to look through the others:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/manhattan-gmat

If you have questions about the content of any of the articles, there's a "comment" mechanism built in at the bottom of each article. (I'll get an email that you posted a comment.)

I also encourage you to post problems to discuss in the way described in the above articles. Give your own analysis in your post, then ask any questions you have.